I wanted to take some time to provide a thoughtful review on this program as I pulled my child for…read morehis own safety. I want to preface this with: I am a member of Eastlake Church. The church is fantastic, and the kids program there for during church services is GREAT and this review is ONLY pertaining to the Eastlake Children's Center preschool which is run M-F.
I was very eager to enroll my son in this program. I had heard so many amazing things about this program and it was an added bonus that we love our church. I even provided paperwork to this program when my son was approximately 1 year old (they don't take kids until they are 2 but I wanted to ensure we were not waitlisted as I had read that they were such a popular program). My son finally was enrolled this July for the 2024-25 school year. When he started he was fully potty trained. As school started it was clear there was some new school year kinks needing to be worked out regarding organization and teachers. I tried to remain positive and provide grace when a new teacher I had never met would be giving me my child without an ID check. My son immediately had potty accidents. More than when he started training. I thought this was simply because there are no potty's in the classrooms as typical 2 year rooms have at most programs. Assuming it's just a distance to potty adjustment we proceeded on. However, my son started hitting himself and yelling at himself in the potty when he was home saying "YOU GO POTTY IN TOILET NOT POTTY IN PANTS!" then would hit his leg. He's never behaved in this way. It broke my heart. I spoke to Ms. Jeanette at the front about how I think the teachers may be yelling at him and stressing him out about the bathroom here, and it's affecting us at home. They started making me put pullups on him (which we have NEVER done). The accidents never got better. I could never talk to his teacher because his main teacher was only there from 830-12 with him. Because he was a full time kid, I would be picking him up from different random teachers all the time. Some wouldn't even know which kid was mine when I said his name even thought he had been at the school a month at this point.
About 2 weeks into school I picked my son up (again from a random teacher I've never met the 2 weeks prior to this) and he had a huge scrape on his forehead, as if he had fallen head first on cement. My son has been in a daycare setting since he was a baby, so I am aware that I should be getting an "ouch report" anytime there is an injury of a child, even if they are unsure how it happened. Once they see an injury, they need to report when that injury was noticed. At his last daycare I would also get a phone call for any head injuries. I got nothing here. However, it's only the 2nd week of school and I just let it go and chalked it up to the new school year situation. New teachers etc. About a week and a half later I picked my son up and he had a scrape on his nose that was bloody and thick. I didn't say anything to the teacher at pick up because when I gave the name of my child I had to point at which child he was for her to know who to give me. (again terrible security and no ID was checked). If she doesn't know my kid by his name, she def doesn't know what happened to his nose. No ouch report. Since I was already waiting to hear back from the director via email regarding my request to meet with her, I decided I would bring it up then. Then, the very next day my son had yet a THIRD scratch on his face with no ouch report. As I walked out I stopped to talk to Ms. Jeanette (I think she's the assistant director?) and I told her this is the 3rd time in 2 weeks my son has bloody marks/scratches on his face with no ouch report. All she said was "yeah you should have an ouch report" and that was it. I was hoping for "well let's contact his teacher and figure out what's happening" or "maybe we can ask the teachers to see if they set it somewhere besides his cubby" or "I will talk to the teachers and figure out what's going on" but she didn't seem to care at all. She took no worry to this. Again, I've had my son in daycare settings for a while, so I am not one of those overly paranoid parents, but the lack of concern for my son's safety, especially regarding facial injuries frequently over a short period was alarming. I immediately pulled him from the program, and reported them to state licensing. My son had been in school there only 1 month. During the time I enrolled him officially in February 2024 until the day I pulled him from the program there were THREE licensing violations- one of which was a teacher physically abusing children and another was a teacher leaving a child alone on the playground!
This program used to be the best around. There was a change in the leadership of the preschool a couple years back, and needless to say the program is NOT what it used to be. My husband said that most times he picked our son u